1. Field
The present disclosed embodiments relate generally to wireless mobile computing devices, and more specifically to power savings in the same relative to dimming the device display when a webpage, web content, or mobile device application is loading, based on an application state and user activity.
2. Background
Mobile communication devices including devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, gaming devices, and laptop computers are now ubiquitous. A common and ongoing issue with these types of devices is power management. More specifically, these types of devices continue to develop more advanced processing resources, displays, and communication systems that demand more and more power.
Although advances continue to be made in the areas of battery technology and hardware efficiency, these advances do not directly address the users' experience when a mobile device is operating under power constraints. As a consequence, the current mobile device power management techniques are not adequate to meet user expectations and will almost certainly not be satisfactory in the future.
One aspect of power management involves control of the display brightness, since displays are the most power-hungry aspects of many mobile devices today. For instance, 35% of battery power is often consumed by display components during web browsing. Many devices allow the user to manually control the screen brightness and others include algorithms that automatically adjust brightness based on signals from ambient light sensors and the amount of remaining battery charge. But these traditional display brightness control algorithms are typically tailored to characteristics of the mobile device and do not account for the user's interaction with the device, or the state of a running application on the device.
There is therefore a need in the art for systems and methods that use evidence of a user's interaction with the mobile device to control the display brightness and thereby conserve power.